Quicksilver (92 page)

At some point I became aware of voices—a man’s and a woman’s—and I knew that they had been conversing nearby for quite some time. With all of these other concerns and distractions I had taken no note of them. I lifted my head to gaze directly across the canal at two figures on horseback: a tall magnificent well-built man in a vast wig like a lion’s mane, and a woman, built something like a Turkish wrestler, dressed in hunting clothes and carrying a riding crop. The woman’s face was exposed to the sun, and had been for a long time, for she was tanned like a saddlebag. She and her companion had been talking about something else, but when I looked up I somehow drew the notice of the man; instantly he reached up and doffed his hat to me, from across the canal! When he did, the sun fell directly on his face and I recognized him as King Louis XIV.

I simply could not imagine any way to recover from this indignity, and so I pretended I had not seen him. As the crow flies we were not far apart, but by land we were far away—to reach me, the King and his Diana-like hunting-companion would have had to ride west for some distance along the bank of the canal; circumnavigate the large pool at that end; and then go the same distance eastwards along the opposite bank. So I convinced myself that they were far away and I pretended not to see them; God have mercy on me if I chose wrong. I tried to cover my embarrassment by ranting to the children about Descartes and Euclid.

The King put his hat back on and said, “Who is she?”

I closed my eyes and sighed in relief; the King had decided to play along, and act as if we had not seen each other. Finally I had coaxed the floating cork back into my hands. I drew myself up and sat on the brink of the canal with my skirts spread out around me, in profile to the King, and quietly lectured the children.

Meanwhile I was praying that the woman would not know my name. But as you will have guessed, Doctor, she was none other than his majesty’s sister-in-law, Elisabeth Charlotte, known to Versailles as Madame, and known to Sophie—her beloved aunt—as Liselotte.

Why didn’t you tell me that the Knight of the Rustling Leaves was a
clitoriste?
I suppose this should come as no surprise given
that her husband Philippe is a homosexual, but it caught me somewhat off guard. Does she have lovers? Hold, I presume too much; does she even know what she is?

She gazed at me for a languid moment; at Versailles, no one of importance speaks quickly and spontaneously, every utterance is planned like a move in a chess game. I knew what she was about to say: “I do not know her.” I prayed for her to say it, for then the King would know that I was not a person, did not exist, was no more worthy of his attention than a fleeting ripple in the surface of the canal. Then finally I heard Madame’s voice across the water: “It looks like that girl who was duped by d’Avaux and molested by the Dutchmen, and showed up dishevelled and expecting sympathy.”

It strikes me as unlikely that Liselotte could have recognized me in this way without another channel of information; did you write a letter to her, Doctor? It is never clear to me how much you are acting on your own and how much as a pawn
—
or perhaps I should say “knight” or “rook”
—
of Sophie.

These cruel words would have brought me to tears if I’d been one of those rustic countesses who flock to Versailles to be deflowered by men of rank. But I had already seen enough of this place to know that the only truly cruel words here are “She is nobody.” And Madame had not said that. Consequently, the King had to look at me for a few moments longer.

Louis and Beatrice had noticed the King, and were frozen with a mixture of awe and terror—like statues of children.

Another one of those pauses had gone by. I heard the King saying, “That story was told in my presence.” Then he said, “If d’Avaux would only put his letters into the bodice of some poxy old hag he could be assured of absolute secrecy, but what Dutchman would not want to break the seal on
that
envelope?”

“But, Sire,” said Liselotte, “d’Avaux is a Frenchman—and what Frenchman
would
?”

“He is not as refined in his tastes as he would have you think,” the King returned, “and
she
is not as coarse as
you
would have
me
think.”

At this point little Louis stepped forward so suddenly that I was alarmed he would topple into the Canal and oblige me to swim; but he stopped on the brink, thrust out one leg, and bowed to the King just like a courtier. I pretended now to
notice the King for the first time, and scrambled to my feet. Beatrice and I made curtseys across the canal. Once more the King acknowledged us by doffing his hat, perhaps with a certain humorous exaggeration.

“I see that look in your eye,
vôtre majesté,
” said Liselotte.

“I see it in yours, Artemis.”

“You have been listening to gossip. I tell you that these girls of low birth who come here to seduce noblemen are like mouse droppings in the pepper.”

“Is
that
what she wants us to believe? How banal.”

“The best disguises are the most banal, Sire.”

This seemed to be the end of their strange conversation; they rode slowly away.

The King is said to be a great huntsman, but he was riding in an extremely stiff posture
—
I suspect he is suffering from hemorrhoids or possibly a bad back.

I took the children back straightaway and sat down to write you this letter. For a nothing like me, today’s events are the pinnacle of honor and glory, and I wanted to memorialize them before any detail slipped from my memory.

To M. le comte d’Avaux

1 September 1685

Monseigneur,

I have as many visitors as ever (much to the annoyance of M. le comte de Béziers), but since I got a deep tan and took to wearing sackcloth and quoting from the Bible a lot, they are not as interested in romance. Now they come asking me about my Spanish uncle. “I am sorry that your Spanish uncle had to move to Amsterdam, mademoiselle,” they say, “but it is rumored that hardship has made him a wise man.” The first time some son of a marquis came up to me spouting such nonsense I told him he must have me mixed up with some other wench, and sent him packing! But the next one dropped your name and I understood that he had in some sense been dispatched by you—or, to be more precise, that his coming to me under the delusion of my having a wise Spanish uncle was a consequence or ramification of some chain of events that had been set in motion by you. On that assumption, I began to play along, quite cautiously, as I did not know what sort of game might be afoot. From the way this fellow talked I soon understood that he believes me to be a sort of crypto-Jew, the bastard offspring of a swarthy Spanish
Kohan and a butter-haired Dutchwoman, which might actually seem plausible as the sun has bleached my hair and darkened my skin.

These conversations are all the same, and their particulars are too tedious to relate here. Obviously you have been spreading tales about me, Monseigneur, and half the petty nobles of Versailles now believe that I (or, at any rate, my fictitious uncle) can help them get out from under their gambling debts, pay for the remodeling of their châteaux, or buy them splendid new carriages. I can only roll my eyes at their avarice. But if the stories are to be believed, their fathers and grandfathers used what money they had to raise private armies and fortify their cities against the father and grandfather of the present King. I suppose it’s better for the money to go to dressmakers, sculptors, painters, and
chefs de cuisine
than to mercenaries and musket-makers.

Of course it is true that their gold would fetch a higher rate of return wisely invested in Amsterdam than sitting in a strong-box under their beds. The only difficulty lies in the fact that I cannot manage such investments from a closet in Versailles while at the same time teaching two motherless children how to read and write. My Spanish uncle is a fiction of yours, presumably invented because you feared that these French nobles would never entrust their assets to a woman. This means that I must do the work personally, and this is impossible unless I have the freedom to travel to Amsterdam several times a year…

To Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

12 Sept. 1685

This morning I was summoned to the comparatively spacious and splendid apartments of a Lady in Waiting to the Dauphine, in the South Wing of the palace adjacent to the apartments of the Dauphine herself.

The lady in question is the duchesse d’Oyonnax. She has a younger sister who is the marquise d’Ozoir and who happens to be visiting Versailles with her daughter of nine years.

The girl seems bright but is half dead with asthma. The marquise ruptured something giving birth to her and cannot have any more children.

The d’Ozoirs are one of the rare exceptions to the general rule that all French nobles of any consequence must dwell at Versailles—but only because the Marquis has responsibilities
at Dunkirk. In case you have not been properly maintaining your family trees of the European nobility, Doctor, I will remind you that the Marquis d’Ozoir is the bastard son of the duc d’Arcachon.

Who, when he was a stripling of fifteen, begat the future marquis off his grandmama’s saucy maid-companion
—
the poor girl had been dragooned into teaching the young Duke his first love-lesson.

The duc d’Arcachon did not actually take a wife until he was twenty-five, and she did not produce a viable child (Étienne d’Arcachon) for three years after that. So the bastard was already a young man by the time his legitimate half-brother was born. He was shipped off to Surat as an aide to Boullaye and Beber, who tried to establish the French East India Company there around 1666.

But as you may know the French E.I.C. did not fare quite as well as the English and Dutch have done. Boullaye and Beber began to assemble a caravan in Surat but had to depart before all preparations had been made, because the city was in the process of falling to the Mahratta rebels. They traveled into the interior of Hindoostan, hoping to establish trade agreements. As they approached the gates of a great city, a delegation of banyans—the richest and most influential
commerçants
of that district—came out to greet them, carrying small gifts in bowls, according to the local custom. Boullaye and Beber mistook them for beggars and thrashed them with their riding-whips as any self-respecting upper-caste Frenchmen would do when confronted by panhandling Vagabonds on the road.

The gates of the city were slammed in their faces. The French delegation were left to wander through the hinterland like out-castes. Quickly they were abandoned by the guides and porters they had hired at Surat, and began to fall prey to highwaymen and Mahratta rebels. Eventually they found their way to Shahjahanabad, where they hoped to beg for succor from the Great Mogul Aurangzeb, but they were informed he had retired to the Red Fort at Agra. They traveled to Agra only to be told that the officials they needed to prostrate themselves before, and to shower with gifts, in order to gain access to the Great Mogul, were stationed in Shahjahanabad. In this way they were shuttled back and forth along one of Hindoostan’s most dangerous roads until Boullaye had been strangled by dacoits and Beber had
succumbed to disease (or perhaps it was the other way round) and most of their expedition had fallen victim to more or less exotic hazards.

The bastard son of the duc d’Arcachon survived all of them, made his way out to Goa, talked his way aboard a Portuguese ship bound for Mozambique, and pursued a haphazard course to the slave coast of Africa, where finally he spied a French frigate flying the coat of arms of the Arcachon family: fleurs-de-lis and Neeger-heads in iron collars. He persuaded some Africans to row him out to that ship in a long-boat and identified himself to her captain, who of course was aware that the duc’s illegitimate son was lost, and had been ordered to keep an ear to the ground for any news. The young man was brought aboard the ship.

And the Africans who had brought him out were rewarded with baptisms, iron jewelry, and a free trip to Martinique to spend the rest of their lives working in the agricultural sector.

This led to a career running slaves to the French West Indies. During the course of the 1670s the young man amassed a modest fortune from this trade and purchased, or was rewarded by the King with, the title of Marquis. Immediately he settled in France and married. For several reasons he and his wife have not established themselves near Versailles. For one thing, he is a bastard whom the duc d’Arcachon prefers to keep at arm’s length. For another, his daughter has asthma and needs to breathe sea-air. Finally, he has responsibilities along the sea-coast. You may know, Doctor, that the people of India believe in the perpetual reincarnation of souls; likewise, the French East India Company might be thought of as a soul or spirit that goes bankrupt every few years but is always re-incarnated in some new form. Recently it has happened one more time. Naturally many of its operations are centered at Dunkirk, le Havre, and other sea-ports, and so that is where the Marquis and his family spend most of their time. But the Marquise comes to visit her sister the duchesse d’Oyonnax frequently, and brings the daughter with her.

As I mentioned, Oyonnax is a lady-in-waiting to the Dauphine, which is looked on as an extremely desirable position. The Queen of France died two years ago, and had been estranged from the King for many years at the time of her death. The King has Mme. de Maintenon now, but she is not officially his wife. Therefore, the most important woman at
Versailles
not really, but nominally, according to the rules of precedence
is the Dauphine, wife of the King’s eldest son and heir apparent. Competition among the noble ladies of France for positions in her household is intense…

So intense that it has resulted in no fewer than four poisonings. I do not know if the sister of d’Ozoir poisoned anyone herself, but it is generally understood that she did allow her naked body to be used as a living altar during black masses held at an abandoned country church outside of Versailles. This was before the King became aware that his court was infested with homicidal Satanists, and instituted the
chambre ardente
to investigate these doings. She was indeed among the 400-odd nobles arrested and interrogated, but nothing was ever proved against her.